THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19196, 12 June 1924, Page 6

THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY.

The Americans still lend encouragement to the idea that they are a somewhat remarkable people, even in the sense in which Charles Dickens found them so. They enter upon the business of electing their Presidential candidates more in the spirit of exuberant schoolboys than in that of responsible citizens engaged in an affair of solemn national import. Judgment upon surface manifestations, at the back of which there is a train of tradition and organisation, such as evidently makes a strong appeal to the American character, might easily, of course, be lamentably shortsighted. The fact remains that the process of electing the President of the United States is carried , out to the accompaniment of phenomena which every four years give the rest of the world fresh cause for astonishment. The opening of the Republican Convention marks the beginning of what is brightly styled in a New York message “the great quadrennial political circus.” As au example of elaborate stage management the scene depicted in the huge auditorium, seating 14,000 people, is doubtless entitled to a species .of admiration: Calculated and excellently manoeuvred enthusiasm were in evidence as usual, the presiding official having direct telephonic communication with brass bands situated in ■ various parts of the auditorium, and .telenioning. directions to strike up particular State tunes in order to maintain the proper pitch of feeling among the various groups of delegates. Nothing actually is done on the spur of the moment. Everything is previously planned. Such is the American idea of the triumph of political organisation. Probably the great political parties adhere to these campaign methods not only because they consider them effective, but because they consider that they have become essential in the appeal to the national temperament. The greater the noise and enthusiasm accompanying the party conventions the higher the estimate apparently of the party vitality which they evince. If the Americans’ delight is'; making their party conventions a pandemonium, that is,*however, their own affair. Seemingly this is necessary to aid the’ delegates in making a wise choice of the prospective head of their great Republic, and the main consideration is that out of apparent chaos order shall emerge. In his treatise on the American Commonwealth Viscount Bryce answered in his own discerning way the question why the party" conventions should be so pre-eminently tempestuous, seeing that they are not casual, concourses, but consist of persons duly elected; and that they are governed by a regular code of procedure. The factors particularly generating excitement are identified as very large numbers and important issues. A national convention consists of inoro than eight hundred delegates, as many alternates, and some twelve thousand spectators. It is the hugest mass meeting the world knows of. Not only, therefore, does the sympathy of numbers exerf an unequalled force, but this host, large' than the army with wlpch the Greeks conquered at Marathon, lias an issue of the highest and most exciting nature to decide, an issue which quickens the pulse even of those who read in cold blood afterwards how the votes fell ns the roll of States was called, and which thrills those who see and listen, and, most of all. those who are themselves concerned as delegates, with an intensity of 'emotion surpassing, in proportion to the magnitude of the issue, that which attends the finish of a well-contested boat race. If you wish to realise the passionate .eagerness of an American convention take the House of Commons or the French Chamber during a division which is to decide the fate of a ministry and a policy, and,raising the numbers present twenty-fold, imagine the . excitement twenty-fold hotter. We may leave it at that. The main interest in the Republican Convention is, of course, the nomination of the party candidate . for the Presidency. It was to be anticipated that there would he wrangling over the party platform, consideration of which, in a long series of resolutions, is an important preliminary in the business of these . conventions. But nothing has occurred to conflict with the prediction that Mr. Coolidge’s nomination as Republican candidate is assured. The approval from his party accorded to the announcement of his candidature earlier in the year “set the seal upon him,” we read, “for better or for worse, for good and all. Therefore if the delegates to the Republican Convention should fail to nominate him, their failure would bo a repudiation of him, a repudiation of Harding, and thereby, a repudiation of their own two Administrations. According to the ‘laws’ of American politics such a course would be fatal.”